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Four Open Field Books: New Inspiration in Judaeo-Christian Spirituality
1993, trade paperback edition, 1st edition appearing in one volume (the individual monographs in this volume were previously published in a limited number first edition, 1987 to 1989), translated from the Dutch -- in English, JWK Publications, South Norwalk, CT. 182 pages. "The four monographs in this volume provide an introduction to Jan Willem Kaiser (1897-1961). The Dutch author of a number of unusual books which offer a reinterpretation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in a Neo-Gnostic vein." A scholarly title.
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January 6, 2008
Presently I'm the translator and publisher of Kaiser in English, and while the book is currently sold out, it will be reprinted in due course, and this time I hope to continue and publish the rest of Kaiser's work in translation within the next few years, completing hopefully by 2012.
The tradition Kaiser represents is one of a very psychological approach to the understanding of Jesus' teachings, grounded in thousands of years of Eastern and Western spiritual tradition.
The essays in this book are edited versions of four presentations he gave at the "Het Oude Loo" (Later: "Het Open Veld") conferences of which he was the principal organizer in the 1950's. I read his essay on "Religion and Religions," the third one in the bundle as alsmost a pre-figuring of ACIM, and certainly the study of Kaiser for me laid the foundation that led me seemingly inexorably to ACIM.
Today I see Kaiser, along with Kyriacos Markides, but also older sources like Angelus Silezius, and many others as proof that even behind the foreground of Christianity, numerous traditions of a deeper and more spiritual understanding of Jesus have survived, or simply surfaced from time to time. And so the message was never lost, in spite of all the repression, and today it is coming into its own in the form of the Course, which is a profound modern integration, which would be unthinkable without everything from Shakespeare, to Freud, and Quantum Mechanics.
Kaiser represents a unique approach, which has its foundation in his 1929 book on the study and interpretation of drama, in that he sees the Gospel drama as an archetypical psychodrama that models our inner experience in following Jesus, along the way his work integrates a lot of insights from Western and Eastern traditions. Underlying it all is his implicit understanding that there is only one mind, but that our pathways home differ in appearance but are always the same in content, quite similar to the Course's notion that it is only one form of the universal course.
The tradition Kaiser represents is one of a very psychological approach to the understanding of Jesus' teachings, grounded in thousands of years of Eastern and Western spiritual tradition.
The essays in this book are edited versions of four presentations he gave at the "Het Oude Loo" (Later: "Het Open Veld") conferences of which he was the principal organizer in the 1950's. I read his essay on "Religion and Religions," the third one in the bundle as alsmost a pre-figuring of ACIM, and certainly the study of Kaiser for me laid the foundation that led me seemingly inexorably to ACIM.
Today I see Kaiser, along with Kyriacos Markides, but also older sources like Angelus Silezius, and many others as proof that even behind the foreground of Christianity, numerous traditions of a deeper and more spiritual understanding of Jesus have survived, or simply surfaced from time to time. And so the message was never lost, in spite of all the repression, and today it is coming into its own in the form of the Course, which is a profound modern integration, which would be unthinkable without everything from Shakespeare, to Freud, and Quantum Mechanics.
Kaiser represents a unique approach, which has its foundation in his 1929 book on the study and interpretation of drama, in that he sees the Gospel drama as an archetypical psychodrama that models our inner experience in following Jesus, along the way his work integrates a lot of insights from Western and Eastern traditions. Underlying it all is his implicit understanding that there is only one mind, but that our pathways home differ in appearance but are always the same in content, quite similar to the Course's notion that it is only one form of the universal course.
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